Journalists from the investigative team in Iceland that released the now-infamous US military video on WikiLeaks traveled to Baghdad recently to meet with the family members of some of the twelve people killed in the 2007 attack. Ahlam Abdelhussain, the widow of Saleh Mutashar who was killed when the gunship opened fire on a van, asks, "Why was he shot with his children in the car? They did nothing wrong. He was helping a journalist. What...

We speak with a former member of Bravo Company 2-16, the military unit involved in the 2007 helicopter shooting of Iraqi civilians that killed twelve people, including two Reuters employees, as seen on the military video released by WikiLeaks. "The natural thing to do would be to instantly judge or criticize the soldiers in this video," says Josh Stieber. "Not to justify what they did, but militarily speaking, they did exactly...

As the US Central Command says it has no plans to reopen an investigation into the July 2007 helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff, we play never-before-seen eyewitness interviews filmed the day after the attack. [includes rush transcript]

We speak with two journalists who have covered Gaza extensively about the dangers and difficulties of reporting from the Occupied Territories: Mohammed Omer, an award-winning Palestinian journalist who was interrogated and beaten by armed Israeli security guards on his way back home to Gaza after receiving the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in London in July of 2008, and Ayman Mohyeldin, the Gaza correspondent for Al Jazeera...

The US military has confirmed the authenticity of newly released video showing US forces indiscriminately firing on Iraqi civilians. On Monday, the website WikiLeaks.org posted footage taken from a US military helicopter in July 2007 as it killed twelve people and wounded two children. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency, photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh. We speak with WikiLeaks co-founder Julian...

As US and NATO forces are preparing to launch a major military offensive in the Afghan city of Kandahar this June, we speak with Wadah Khanfar, the Director General of Al Jazeera. "Bombing and killing will always increase the anger and frustration against the Americans, and it will always be in favor of the Taliban," says Khanfar. We also look at the US military’s history of targeting Al Jazeera’s reporters, including...

University of Illinois Professor Robert McChesney and The Nation correspondent John Nichols, two leading advocates of the media reform movement, join us to talk about their new book, The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again. McChesney and Nichols argue that journalism should be seen as a public good and that the government should help save American journalism by granting more subsidies to...

While traveling to Vancouver, Canada, to speak at the Vancouver Public Library at a benefit for community radio stations, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and her two colleagues were detained by Canadian authorities. She was questioned extensively about the speech she intended to give, their car was gone through by armed border guards, and their papers and laptop computers were scoured. The armed interrogators were particularly interested in...

The death toll from the Philippines’ worst politically linked massacre has risen to fifty-seven. The victims were abducted as they were traveling to nominate an opposition candidate for governor in upcoming elections. The dead include eighteen Filipino journalists from regional newspapers. It’s believed to be the highest number of reporters killed in a single attack anywhere in the world. We speak with Walden Bello, an Akbayan...

Russia has seen an alarming rise in the murders of journalists and activists speaking out about government abuses in the embattled North Caucasus region. We speak to Elena Milashina, a Russian investigative journalist who has just won the 2009 Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism from Human Rights Watch. She was friends with both the activist and journalist Natalya Estemirova, who was killed in July, and the internationally...